


Death Is Not The End

by 54mmyR011



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Changing Tenses, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Discrimination, Neglect, People are Assholes, Rating May Change, Uzumaki Naruto Needs a Hug, Uzumaki Naruto swears a lot, Violence, bad citizens, bad guardians, because I’m bad at that, eventually, oc reincarnation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:47:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25211884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/54mmyR011/pseuds/54mmyR011
Summary: Uzumaki Naruto was a pretty good, happy-go-lucky kid, despite everything. He grew up, became a shinobi, fought a war at, what, seventeen? He had won, become hokage, had kids and a wife, and basically, it was all good shit.And while he may have been expecting something similar, this is definitely not anywhere even close to what he thought it would be like.(An OC/semi-SI reincarnated as Naruto fic. Yes, I am a whore for reincarnation fics. You can’t stop me.)
Relationships: endgame already planned sorry, none yet, some in the works
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	1. Nirvana isn’t the greatest term to use when everyone hates you.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for giving this story a chance! I don’t know how many chapters it will be, nor if it will get finished, but I will at least end up posting all of what I currently have written. I don’t currently have an update schedule, but maybe eventually. 
> 
> And now, to begin the tale...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "My sun sets to rise again."  
> -Robert Browning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Individual chapter warnings and chapter summary at the end notes.

It takes a long time to start to remember things. Longer than, he supposes, it should have. 

It doesn’t really matter, in the end, how long it took him to remember, or how long it took on average, because he was alone. He had no measuring stick to figure out if he was experiencing the average or not. Was it normal to not remember for the first few years of life? Was it not normal?

It doesn’t matter exactly _what_ he remembered, either, not really. But he likes to think about those memories, sometimes. When things aren’t so good. 

He’s probably the quietest kid in the orphanage. 

Ironic, considering how he had been a pretty loud person before. 

Also probably one of the biggest cliches. He hated cliches for the longest time, couldn’t really read any stories with them save a handful. 

It doesn’t matter, though, because he’s in the orphanage, and he’s an outcast, which makes him the paramount cliche of his life. 

It wasn’t like he _wanted_ to be the outcast. If it were up to him, he would have _loved_ to play with the other kids, maybe learn some cool tricks or whatever. Unfortunately, it _wasn’t_ up to him. Mostly, it was up to the matron. 

Who was a bitch. A right, absolute, horrid bitch. 

He doesn’t even care to remember her name, half the time, if only out of spite. He does actually remember it, but he much prefers Ms. Bitch to her real name. 

Well. Bitch-san. He was in a Japanese speaking country now. Or city? Town. Village? He hasn’t really been outside of the orphanage enough to know how big the area is. 

Speaking of the Japanese, he sucks at learning new languages. Not particularly because it was a _new_ language, but because… something. He didn’t actually know why. It was a block in his brain that hurt to focus on. Before, he had taken a few years of Spanish, knew some French, some German, the barest of Russian, and had been branching into Latin. Really, he liked learning languages. It sucked, it was hard, but the whole process could be _fun._

This was not fun. 

He couldn’t pinpoint one concrete reason why - it was more like a handful that built up and hit like a brick every time he tried to speak. 

The matron, whose voice was sheer and patronizing and so agonizingly high pitched it hurt his ears. The other kids, who wouldn’t get anywhere near him, or would jeer at him every time he tried to learn the words, the grammar, the rules. The complicated kanji staring up at him, when he had only ever learned a few characters of Hiragana just for fun. It was all… frustrating. Grating. Annoying. 

But he could deal with all that. He could. Just… he needed to be patient, is all. 

He hates the part where _food,_ of all things, is denied to him just for speaking. _That_ was the part that made him so absolutely furious he could barely hold back the screams of rage that threatened to engulf him and pour out of his throat. 

Children should not be denied food. A basic thought. An obvious moral statement. A _legal_ statement, to many. And fucking yet. The _matron,_ who should have been providing for _all_ the orphans in the orphanage, _she,_ of all people, decided, you know what? Fuck this one kid. He’s a little shit. I don’t like his voice. He doesn’t get food this week. 

Bitch lady doesn’t deserve any fucking _air,_ is what he thinks. 

But whatever. Whatever! He can deal with that. He can deal with it. He can. 

Just. Just until he’s capable of leaving. Or something. 

He had never been to an orphanage before. He had known the system to be utter shit, but to experience it firsthand was… it was something else entirely. He honestly regrets all the times he had thought he had done enough in the past for people who came from the system. He could have, _should have,_ done so much more. 

Whatever. Doesn’t matter now. 

Not as bad but still just as annoying is the actual, very infuriating, violence that the matron very obviously encouraged. And, you know what? Okay. Sure, whatever lady. You can have your beliefs, or whatever. Kinda really shitty to push it onto kids, you know, but _whatever._

The infuriating part is that she _only pushes the kids to hit_ **_him._**

Just him. Only him. He is the only one who the others are encouraged to beat the shit out of regularly. 

This lady. Actively encouraging whatever the fuck this is. Discrimination? Bullying? Harassment? Not racism, probably, because he’s seen his face in the mirror and despite the birthmarks, he very clearly is the same subset of Asian as the other kids. Although, he could definitely get some more tone in his skin. Not ever being in the sun sucks. 

But you know what? At this point, it doesn’t even fucking matter. 

He deals with it. 

Because he’s got bigger shit to worry about than kids shoving a stick so hard into his face he was nearly blinded. 

Like, you know, the whole part about remembering things. 

And while he likes to think about _some_ of those memories, others? Not so much. 

Like the one that cuts off the memories in the blink of an eye. 

He would avoid it if he knew it wouldn’t make him a depressed little shit. 

As it stands, however, he’s too young to try and ignore the memories without ending up dealing with, oh, whatever amount of mental health issues. Which isn’t to say he doesn’t have enough already. Oh, the trauma just waiting for him to process when he’s safe out of the orphanage will be a hell of a ride. 

But this? The memories? Those were the kicker. 

It’s not exactly a solid memory. It’s more a… feeling? No, it’s more than just a _feeling._ It’s fuzzy, hazy, no real details in it, but there’s a solid fact in there somewhere. It’s a fact he would have loved to avoid, repress, and deal with years in the future in therapy, but he doesn’t know where he is. Plus, no concrete evidence that he’ll ever even manage to get enough money for therapy, so… yeah. 

That fact, that he wishes dearly to avoid, he hates. 

He absolutely, vividly, with all his being, _loathes_ the memory of his death. 

He doesn’t actually remember how he died. That’s the most fuzzy part of the memory. But the fact that he had died was the most solid thing he could grasp. There were holes in the memory, he could tell, without even pressing into it. It was easy to figure that the memory itself had been very very repressed. 

But the thing is, he’s a kid now. His first solid memory of his life before was of his death. Which, well, kind of sucked. He had freaked out a lot. Had really nearly ended up ignoring the memory anyways, until more memories followed. The good ones, too, not just the bad ones. 

For the most part, they’re all somewhat fuzzy. Faces, names, voices? All empty. Static. The haze of a radio in between stations, the tv on but not on an active channel. He can remember facts much more easily than details. 

He had been a man. He had been a _trans_ man. He had been accepted, mostly. He had been an adult. A new adult. Something like that. He had gone to school. He had had a fairly large family. He had been asexual. Probably still was, although he didn’t know much about reincarnation. He had been in a few relationships. He thinks, maybe, more than one at a time, but he doesn’t remember any bad feelings, no resentment or jealousy, so the jury’s still out on that one. He kind of really hopes he hadn’t been a cheater. That would suck. 

But other than the base facts, there were some scenes. The general idea of a conversation here, the strongest emotion there. It was a blurry mess, some days, and others, he could sort through them without trouble. 

His death was a problem. 

Not _really,_ but also, yeah, it was. 

He doesn’t remember how he died. Had he drowned? Bled out? Been killed? He doesn’t think he had died of old age, because he doesn’t remember being old, but it’s always possible he just _doesn’t remember_. Maybe he had gotten sick, died in a hospital. Maybe he had been shot. Maybe he had tripped on the stairs, he doesn’t fucking know. 

And it’s frustrating as much as it is relieving. 

Because he doesn’t _want_ to remember how he died. He knows there’s a chance it hadn’t been pretty, hadn’t been fun, hadn’t been _easy._ It was probably traumatic. He already had enough trauma in this life. 

But… if the memory ever _did_ come up, he didn’t want it to hit him too hard. And already, the memory brick fucking sucked. 

He would have _loved_ to look into it more. Not _really,_ but the thought still stands, because, really? 

Things were obviously _far_ too easy on him. 

Because at, what, four? Five? Three years old? 

He gets kicked out of the _fucking_ orphanage. 

And really, he should have fucking seen it coming. 

So, memory processing? On hold. At least until he’s _actually_ somewhere safe. 

Which, for a kid, is a lot fucking harder to find than it should have been. _Especially_ for a kid. It _should_ have been easy. He should have been able to stand looking pitiful, done the _bare minimum,_ and people _should have reacted._ They should have seen the tiny kid, hardly fed, sitting on the streets looking terrified, and immediately called the fucking police. Or, well, whatever they fucking had here. 

But, _really._ At this point, he shouldn’t even be surprised. Because the universe hates him for whatever he must have done in his last life to earn this shit. 

Because the people? The citizens? 

They’re a hundred times worse than the orphans and the matron combined. 

He never thought, in all his memories of life and death, that he would have found himself running through the streets after dusk, being chased by an angry mob just for existing. 

An actual, legitimate _angry mob._

He hadn’t even been near anyone. Hadn’t stolen. Hadn’t hurt anyone. He had done _nothing,_ but the second that _one_ person had seen him - all hell had broken loose. 

A scream. A panicked, furious shout to another nearby person. 

And within a minute, he had been the equivalent of a block away, barely able to stand as he ran, a dozen fucking furious people screaming from behind him to die. 

Unfortunately, he was just a kid. He had short legs, small lungs, and a small heart. He had hardly ever exercised outside of walking through the orphanage. 

He had tripped and they had caught up with him. 

He doesn’t think he had ever felt a steel toed boot breaking a rib in his last life before. 

The beating lasted longer than he would have expected it to. 

_He_ lasted longer than he would have expected it to.

He tries to ignore the remarks of the last few people, spitting words at him as if he knew what they meant. 

Well. He knew one word. The matron had said it enough that he recognized it. 

But it hadn’t _meant_ anything before. It had been a word that he knew was a curse, something vile and rude and derogatory. 

The memory of a single word of Japanese, learned through years of being online, hits him all at once as the last person crawls out of the alleyway to get home before their kids or their spouses start wondering why they’re late.

And he remembers that the word means _demon._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW/CWs: Gratuitous cursing, references to death (includes possibilities of how one could die), child abuse, child neglect, orphanages, ‘the system’, gratuitous violence, refusal to feed a child, encouraging violence/abuse/bullying, mention of racism, mention of the possibility of being blinded, mention of cheating, name calling (use of the term ‘demon’), use of another language (Japanese) without translation (mostly honorifics at this point), please let me know if I missed any!
> 
> Chapter summary, for those uncomfortable with these: The main character gains his first memories early on, gets kicked out, and has to live alone. The people of the area don’t like him.
> 
> And we’re done with the introduction chapter! So, how was it? I’m planning on having each chapter be around 1-2k, but it’ll vary individually by a bit. I have... at least four chapters’ worth of story, and I already have some plans. When I started this, I wanted to do a particular scene, only for me to realize a few thousand words in that that meant I would have to write multiple years worth of story to get there... and I shrugged and kept writing. Anyways! Let me know what you thought in the comments!
> 
> Peace out.


	2. In a festival celebration with hundreds of people, not everyone can be happy.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “People change and things go wrong but just remember life goes on.”  
> -Mac Miller

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Individual chapter warnings and chapter summary at the end notes.

Unfortunately, the attacks, the angry mobs, don’t happen just once. They’re frequent and commonplace anytime he gets seen. He has to learn through very painful steps how to sneak through the city (because the place is definitely large enough to be a city), how to hide in plain sight, how to get out of sight in a split second, how to know when someone sees him. It’s horrible, absolutely terrible, that he has to do so in the first place.

He loses his shoes before the first week has passed. His clothes had already become tattered just from that first attack, but they only got worse throughout the following days. His hair stops feeling soft (not that it had been particularly soft in the orphanage). His skin gets grimy and dusty and there are cracks in his palms and the soles of his feet and patches of his skin get harsh and red. He’s fairly sure that’s not healthy, but there’s nothing he can do about it, really.

He learns quickly that the only way to get good food is to steal it.

It eats at him for the first two weeks. He doesn’t want to steal. He ends up in trash cans more frequently than he would like to admit.

He also ends up caught in trash cans more frequently than he’d like to admit.

He has more than a few scars from those nights.

But by the third week, after finding a sixth trash can empty of food, he can’t manage to not take the bread, freshly made, just sitting on the counter, no one watching over it.

He debates over himself too long, because the owner of the bread steps out and sees him.

He had grabbed the bread and sprinted.

Honestly, he was lucky the man had given up quickly.

He wasn’t so sure he would have managed to survive another night with just trash food.

He remembers some things, too, even though he’s definitely not safe. Small things, mostly. Like how to sew, or the color of the hat he had worn for three years straight. The flags he had pinned on the walls of his room. The correct form for distance running. The way his hands used to instinctively brush through his hair every other second.

That would give him away, nowadays.

But for one thing, at least the sewing is useful. The distance running too, although it takes practice to get it right. He has to steal the fabrics, but he made sure it was cheap material. Bare minimum for sewing his own clothes - the fabric and the needles. Well, those were both easy to find. The city was, evidently, a fairly cultural city, and, well, the vendors on every other corner had something or other that would be useful for something. It was just a matter of finding the fabric vending street, because the actual stores were definitely a no-go. He would get caught in a second flat if he tried to step through a shop door.

But once he got the material and the needles and the string, he was pretty much set to try and make his tiny fingers work through the not-so-complicated motions of actually sewing some reasonable clothes.

One of the first pieces he manages without horrible failure is a simple shirt. It’s uneven and probably would come apart somewhat easily, but it’s the first that had made it through the process, and he’s proud of it, despite the garish orange color of the material. Cheap was right, he wouldn’t have ever bought this just by the color, let alone the horrific texture of the fabric. He doesn’t know entirely what the material was, but it wasn’t anything remotely familiar to him.

The shirt lasts a day. He makes another one, this one somewhat better. It lasted two days.

And he keeps working on it, because he needs clothes that actually aren’t just ripped rags, clothes that might fit him once he starts growing (if he ever starts growing with the amount of food he gets), and sewing his own is the easiest he can think of. He doesn’t understand the sizing of the clothes here, can’t enter a shop, and the vendors are hardly the place to steal clothes, of all things.

He does, a few times, for convenience. Just plain, cheap things that cover him for the night. Mostly, they end up being blacks and greys and whites. A lot of them have a swirl pattern stitched into them, but, well, pretty much everything the people wear have it somewhere, so he just assumes maybe it’s a big brand or something.

He kind of… ends up getting attached to the stuff. The spiral, the orange color, the rough, pebbly texture of the fabric… It's a strange comfort if he ever knew one, but he doesn’t mind it too much.

He’s still a kid, of course. Which means he still has the brain of a child, despite his memories. A lot of the time, he can’t bring himself to move after an attack, regardless of whether or not he’s capable of doing so. Sometimes, he’ll sit in the smallest alley in the dead of night and burst into tears, unable to help it for, sometimes hours at a time. He’s easy to anger, easy to bring to tears, easy to excite, despite everything.

He doesn’t completely understand it, but that’s mostly just to be expected, really.

He doesn’t really try to keep track of the days. He doesn’t really know the calendar yet anyways, but he just… marks how many days have passed, for the most part. The actual date didn’t matter, save maybe for the seasons. The time of day was the most important thing, because in the light of day there sat the most vendors, the most people, whereas there were no vendors at night, but also no people. Both had their advantages and disadvantages. Mostly, he used the night to sleep, to find shelter, and to travel the city with less chance of being attacked.

So, really, he doesn’t much notice the date.

Until the festival.

It’s not even the kind of festival he would assume an Asian country/city would have. It isn’t a solstice, as far as he could tell, it was the middle of a season, they didn’t really do much in the way of crops, and it isn’t any holiday he recognizes.

But what he does recognize are the oni masks littering the walls, the lanterns hanging from every house, on strings and wires over the alleys and the streets.

He’s hesitant. He’d much rather hide away than get anywhere near the massive crowd of citizens.

In the end, it isn’t his choice.

He had stared for too long, in the lip of an alley, in the light of a single lantern, back turned away from what should have obviously been dangerous. He had sat there, watching the proceedings, because his stupid kid brain had wanted to know what was going on.

And because of that, he hadn’t noticed until far too late the group of four adults catching sight of him and sneaking up behind him.

He thinks, maybe, they might have assumed him a normal child, at first. But the people were smart. They knew what the child they hated looked like. They knew his age. They knew him by sight alone.

When he turned to face them, they were all wearing oni masks.

He hadn’t even gotten the chance to scream before he was being grabbed, lifted into the air, and dragged out of the alley.  
He shuts up the second a knife goes to his throat.  
It isn’t a simple knife.

The cheering of the crowd deafens when the group steps into the proceedings.

Silence.

He tries to open his eyes, but they’re tightly shut, hiding his mind from whatever might happen.

They had never done this before. Always, they hadn’t hesitated to just attack. But now… now, they were waiting. Biding their time. Letting him sit there, unharmed, for far too long.

He was nearly in tears by the time the crowd broke the silence in a cacophony of screaming and shouting and jeering. He doesn’t understand most of the words, let alone all of them, but some are clear enough to hear.

It’s all terror. All fear. All hatred. Anger, rage, fury, despair.

Someone shouts over the others.

The only words he recognizes are kill and demon.

Terror makes him seize up on the spot.

The person holding him tightens their grip on his arm.

Silence again.

Someone starts to speak.

It’s a smooth voice, something heavenly, and yet he feels no better. The words are formal, too advanced for him to understand, and yet. The answering calls are all too loud. The person commands their absolute respect and authority, and it’s terrifying.

He barely manages to hold back the sob as it bubbles up. It still manages the quietest of gasps.

He thinks, maybe, the hand holding him had crushed the entire bone, because the pain doesn’t stop. He screams, he knows, but no one does anything about it except to cover his mouth.

A lot of the night is a blur. Hazy, but he knows the details.

He remembers being let go. He remembers being terrified, thinking he was going to die.

He remembers the countdown.

He remembers running, too. For ages. Hours, maybe.

He remembers being chased, too.

Sometimes, he would be caught. Usually, he managed to get out.

And the people themselves were fine. He had experience getting away from them.

But.

The people in oni masks.

They were… something else entirely.

He thinks, maybe, that someone had stabbed him in the eyes at one point. He remembers the burning, the terrible, horrible feeling of blood dripping down his face, the fire in his veins. He remembers running, even then.

He remembers the oni masked people chasing him too.

They were fast. Incomparably fast. He had never stood a chance against them. But more often than not, all they did was a small hit, a kick, a stab here or there.

They had been playing with him.

He doesn’t really remember how the night had ended.

Maybe it had been in the arms of an oni mask. Maybe it had been in an alley, bleeding half to death. Maybe it had been hidden under a vendor.

He doesn’t remember the week following the festival.

He wakes up in a brothel.

The people there are kind, despite the many glares he receives. They had found him outside, one had said, and had taken him in. They hadn’t been able to sit there and let a child die.

Despite everything, there was still some good in the world.

Despite everything, he is still kicked back out onto the street once he is capable of moving on his own.

The first thing he does is find a calendar.

He marks the date down, notes the already marked festival, and crosses out the days he had been healing.

He stashes the calendar away in the tie bag he had sewn himself a few weeks before to hold items.

From then on, he kept track of the date.

The festivals were yearly and he didn’t want to die again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW/CWs: Violence, assault, weapons, a brothel in the end, references to death, references to broken bones, ignored crying, covering the mouth, homelessness, living on the streets, some medical in references to skin problems caused by living on the streets, digging through the trash for food, scars, stealing, implied stalking, let me know if I miss any!
> 
> Chapter summary, for those uncomfortable with these: The main character remembers how to sew his own clothes plus a few other small things, starts learning to make his own clothes, and notices most clothes on the other citizens have a spiral pattern stitched into the. There is a festival, and he briefly gains a home, before being kicked out again. He gets a calendar to keep track of the date. He is also mentioned to have sewn a tie bag, which is where he puts his calendar. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, 
> 
> Peace out.


	3. Frost is apparently the harbinger of every single realization that precedes him realizing he’s going to die.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.”  
> -Hal Borland

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Individual chapter warnings and chapter summary at the end notes.

Winter, he knows, is harsh. 

It’s mostly from his before memories that he knows this, because he hadn’t ever gone outside the orphanage in the winter. He knew, though, that it snowed.

And yet, he still had forgotten about it until the night he had woken up with the lightest dusting of frost over him, shivering. 

He needed winter clothes, but sewing them on such short notice and with frozen fingers was pretty much not happening. So that left stealing on the table. 

The vendors don’t open till after morning.

The shops, for the most part, don’t open early at all.

It takes a few hours. It’s too cold. It’s just frost, but his body is small and underweight and not healthy, and his skin is cracked and itchy and patchy and his eyes are dry and he hates everything about this tiny body. But, eventually, he manages to snag a jacket and a scarf from a vendor. The jacket is small and not very good-feeling, and the scarf is rough and too long, but he deals. 

He’s in the middle of trying to wrap the scarf around his face to cover his ears too when he hears someone shout. 

He knows by the pounding footsteps getting closer that, well, he’s been seen, so… 

He sprints. 

He knows most of the nearby area by heart already. He knows what usually cuts people off his trail, and he knows the places most people won’t follow him through. 

This person does not get lost. Nor do they stop chasing. 

Even more than a few minutes after being seen, what must be quite a few blocks away, the person  _ still _ hasn’t stopped chasing, hasn’t stopped calling out in too-complicated words, and it’s  _ frustrating.  _

Well, scary too. But scary is his normal, so frustrating is the more relevant feeling. 

Eventually, he’s gotten to the edge of his mental map of the city, and he has to turn into unknown streets and alleys. It’s dangerous, of course, and he could very easily slip into a dead end and be caught, easily could run into the wrong part of the city, and well. That would end badly. But at that point, he made a choice, and ended up choosing to turn into the unknown rather than what he knows would just lead him around in circles. 

Probably a bad choice, in hindsight. 

But it didn’t matter in the end, because, after a handful of turns, the buildings stopped.

The clearing is paved, with a railing at one end overlooking what might be a canyon, maybe a lower part of the city, and he can clearly see the sky here. There are trees just poking out behind the railing. 

He freezes at the edge of the clearing. 

He hears the person huffing to catch up with him. 

He doesn’t care. 

Because the canyon rises up in a sort of mountainside, and normally that wouldn’t be anything to gape at. 

No, but this mountainside? 

This mountainside had four giant faces carved into the rock. Giant faces with headbands that all look very distinct, with a spiral leaf symbol carved into their forehead protectors. 

The memory hits will all the clarity of that same fucking brick to his skull. 

Konoha-fucking-gakure. 

A hand grabs onto his arm.

He doesn’t move. 

It doesn’t matter. 

Because he’s in a fucking fictional world. 

No fucking way a whole city remade an entire fucking mountain. 

Easiest explanation wins. 

He’s a fucking kid in a fucking world where people are fucking magic ninjas who die at twenty fucking years old. 

Jesus fucking Christ he’s going to die. 

The person tugs him harshly. He turns, half heartedly, to stare the man in the face. 

He’s wearing an oni mask (an ANBU mask, something inside him notes). 

“Hokage-sama has called for you.”

It’s in simple words. Simple enough for him to understand.

He hates the fact that the tone is dead and yet it still managed to ooze hatred. 

He shrugs in response.

Doesn’t expect the ninja to grip him tighter and jump. 

And boy does he fucking jump. 

He nearly vomits the second he’s set down outside the building. The whole thing must have taken only a few seconds and yet he was sure they were across the entire village. 

(Shunshin, something inside him mutters. He clamps down on it.)

“Hokage-sama is inside.”

He stands on wobbly legs. 

Jesus fucking Christ. 

Please don’t let this be about the theft. 

He would fucking die. 

He steps through the open door. It doesn’t even creak. 

They had landed on the back entrance, second floor, he assumes, because it isn’t the entrance inside the building itself. It’s the entrance directly into the office. 

The old man sits at the desk, brush in hand, but the moment the door shuts he sits up and turns to face him. 

The smile that spreads across his face is familiar. 

He frowns. 

Had he met the man before…?

He recognizes the face, but it isn’t just… it isn’t just from the pictures, from his before memories. 

“It’s good to see you,” the old man begins, and his voice is different from what his before memories sound like. Quieter and rougher, but… endlessly patient and simultaneously so, so tired. “How are you this afternoon?”

He hesitates. 

The words don’t form very well on his lips, still cold and untrained, but he had learned a handful from the streets, from listening and practicing in the dead of night. 

“I’m cold.”

Not the craziest he’s ever said. 

Not like he wanted to say much more. 

The hokage hums and leans away for a moment. When he leans back, there’s a mug of… tea?... in his hands. 

The old man offers it to him. 

He stares at it. 

_ Poison _ , he thinks, and though he very much doubts it, he shakes his head. 

The old man shrugs and takes a sip. 

A pang of hunger hits him, but he doesn’t say anything. The man was a god among ninjas, he had likely dosed himself with so much poison that half the shit on the planet couldn’t kill him. 

The silence goes on too long as the hokage watches him and sips the tea. 

Eventually, his kid brain gets too twitchy, 

“What do you want?” 

The hokage smiles. 

“I wanted to check up on you.”

He scowls. 

“Why?”

The smile doesn’t move, but it feels… strained. 

“I had heard some rumors. I hoped they were false.”

He scowls harder. “What rumors?”

The hokage’s smile  _ does _ twitch now, just barely. 

“Ah, that you were living on the streets.”

He freezes. 

Had he… no. No, definitely not. But…

“Yeah, so what?”

And for a split second, he’s staring into the eyes of someone so old and sad it’s hard to keep his eyes open.

“The streets are no place for a child, Naruto-kun,” he says, and that isn’t the end of it, but he’s stopped listening. 

Because. 

He knows that name. 

He  _ knows _ it. 

It doesn’t click for a second. 

Naruto. 

_ Naruto.  _

That’s the name of the main character. 

From his before memories.

That’s…

“Naruto?” He asks, barely noticing that he had interrupted the hokage. 

The man blinks, his smile slipping away. 

“... what do you mean?”

He barely noticed that his scowl had disappeared.

“You called me Naruto.”

“Because that is your name, Naruto-kun."

Oh.

_ Oh.  _

That… makes sense. Sort of. Not really. Kind of? He isn’t sure. 

Shit. No, shit. That isn’t good. That’s not good at all. Shit. Fuck. Oh, god, Kami-sama. 

He’s fucking going to die. He’s a literal child. He is a  _ literal child.  _

He’s motherfucking Naruto Uzumaki and he is going to  _ die.  _

Fuck. 

What the fuck.

He’s only vaguely listening as the hokage - shit, the  _ hokage _ \- starts speaking again. He can tell by tone alone that the guy is concerned, but… fuck, he can’t bring himself to care at this point. There’s too much going on. 

He recognizes the idea of an apartment. Living on his own, off the streets, with a government allowance.

He doesn’t  _ care.  _

Because only a few minutes before, he had come to the jarring realization that he was in _ Konohagakure, _ and now here he is, staring at the hokage,  _ Sarutobi fucking Hiruzen _ , in the face, and  _ he is Naruto _ . 

Which,  _ fuck, _ because that isn’t good. 

Memories  _ suck _ , but for  _ some fucking reason, _ the fact that he’s  _ Naruto _ is a very very very clear indication of death. He can’t remember much, if  _ any, _ from before, and yet, instead of, oh, he doesn’t know,  _ a fucking actual life, _ he gets memories from a  _ fucking fiction piece.  _

Okay. This is okay. He can handle this. It’s fine. Everything is fine. Perfectly amazing. 

He almost misses the way Hiruzen casts him a worried look before continuing on. 

Shit, no, fuck. That guy - he was the hokage. He was the  _ hokage _ , and… what? What did he do? He, fucking, what, he visited Naruto? He was like… a grandfather figure? Shit, why can’t his memories actually  _ work _ sometimes. 

Shit, okay. Doesn’t matter. He needs something to fucking write on. Like… shit, do they have paper there? They had to, right? He had seen it before, he  _ knows _ he has, but the thought seems suddenly hilarious. Why would ninjas have  _ paper? _ But obviously they did, there were papers in the orphanage, papers at the vendors, in the shops he had never entered, on the hokage’s desk. But scrolls seemed so much more… likely. And yet _.  _ He hates his stupid fucking memories, they’re messing everything up. 

Ah, shit. If he’s Naruto, there’s a reason he’s an orphan. 

Oh shit. 

Oh. 

Fuck.

He’s doomed for sure. 

Because he has a fucking  _ demon _ sealed inside him. 

… fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW/CWs: Gratuitous cursing, orphanage mentions, surviving winter (technically) on the streets as a child, thievery, being chased, death mentions and references, adults hating children, vomit mention, poison mention, hunger, reference to building a tolerance to poison, living on the streets in general, government, references to living on your own, family mention, demon mention (this one will likely be fairly common throughout), please let me know if I missed any!
> 
> Chapter summary, for those uncomfortable with these: The first frost starts, and main character has to find some winter clothes. He finds out that he’s living in Konohagakure due to seeing the Hokage monument, and an ANBU brings him to the hokage, who had called for him. While speaking to the hokage, main character finds out that he is Naruto. He also gets a more permanent home. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, 
> 
> Peace out.


	4. If he really wants to live to age twenty, he has a lot of work to do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Always plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the arc.”
> 
> -Richard Cushing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Individual chapter warnings and chapter summary at the end notes.

It’s a bit strange, standing inside the apartment that’s now his. 

Hiruzen had made the arrangements himself. The apartment had a handful of other people in it, but his section was just as viable as an entire house by itself. The buildings were a cool shape, so… yeah. 

It was two rooms, technically. There was the genkan, and the following open area had the living area and the kitchen attached, and to the side was the door to the bedroom, and inside the bedroom was the entrance to the bathroom. 

That was it. 

If it were a larger house, he would expect it to look more… traditionally Japanese. But it’s just an apartment, and it’s more modern than he had thought it would be. 

The flooring is all tatami, and across from the bedroom is the balcony - the entrance is a sliding door, but it keeps the weather out. 

There is no washitsu. When he thinks back to the orphanage, he kind of… misses the traditional style of everything. 

It all feels… somewhat plain. 

But, at the very least, there’s a bed and food and a real bathroom. 

Speaking of bathrooms, it’s actually more similar to an American bathroom than he thought it would be. The orphanage, of course, had been similar, but the apartment bathroom was a single unit - it was hardly big enough to fit more than five people, and even then it would be a hassle. And, the tub and the shower are both in one in the apartment, whereas in the orphanage they had been separate. 

The flooring is heated, which is nice, and also means the heating is, in fact, on and working. 

The kitchen area is stocked with some food, mostly put there by whoever Hiruzen had stock the place. He had already tacked up his calendar on the wall beside the counter to mark off the days.

The bedroom, thankfully, has the oshiire attached, and inside are two futons and a few other things, like a few shoji, a nightstand, a high chest, a chabudai and kotatsu, a few zabuton, and a zaisu. 

He had taken the kotatsu and the zabuton out and set them in the living room for now, in front of the sofa for ease of access. The futons would only be taken out for sleeping, and (as he’d been told many times while in the orphanage) had to be folded and aired in the sun during the day to prevent mold and mites. 

The shoji, he sets in the corner for dressing, one in the bedroom and one in the ima, and leave the rest put away. The nightstand and high chest sit in the bedroom. 

The whole thing is bland and feels… uninhabited. 

He doesn’t mind it too much. 

Hiruzen had told him he would be given an allowance. He had also said he would begin school soon. He had said that someone would be by to help him get settled into living in the apartment. 

No one had come by, but that’s okay. He didn’t exactly expect them to. 

There was a much more pressing matter, anyways. A few, actually. 

In particular, the demon. 

He didn’t know what to do about it. Him? Did the demon have a gender? He didn’t know. 

He was terrified to try and find out, honestly. 

But what else was he supposed to do? Sit there, knowing there’s a demon trapped inside him and not do anything about it? Ignore it? 

No, he would much rather do something. Anything, really. 

So. He didn’t really have a plan, exactly, but he had an idea.

Mostly, he could wait to do it until after he had actually settled in, actually gotten some paper and clothes and fixed his body so it was something resembling healthy, despite the mass of scars littering his skin. 

And now the birthmarks on his cheeks made more sense. The memories hadn’t come to him back when he had lived in the orphanage, but now that he had them? They were obviously the whisker marks that damned him as the demon’s container to any villager willing to look. And really, that was all of them. They all hated him for what the demon had done to the village, to their families, even though he was only it’s container. They thought he  _ was _ the demon. 

He knew this, and he hated it. 

So really, what else to do but try to talk to the demon in his free time? 

He had never really been able to meditate. Hadn’t even tried in his before memories, but even now, he had only attempted once to twice to deal with pain. It hadn’t worked. So trying now, he’s forced to just… power through it. 

He can’t get rid of his thoughts, can’t empty his mind, so instead, he focuses on one thing. One thought, over and over again, everything that follows and comes with, and counts his heartbeats, paces his breathing, keeps his body moving as little as possible. 

And in his head, he speaks. 

_ Kyuubi. _

The name of the demon is on the tip of his tongue, but it fails to come to him, so instead he uses the title. Nine-tailed. It was about as best he could come up with. 

_ Kyuubi, hello. _

He doesn’t expect an answer, and he doesn’t get one. 

He keeps going. Mostly, it’s just words, spewing through his head in a jumbled mess, trying anything and everything to reach out to the demon inside him without provoking anything. He talks about his day, as lacking as it was. He talks about his life, both his before life and his now life. He talks about whatever comes to mind - the ANBU and their oni masks, the festivals, the seasons changing, learning to sew, remembering things that shouldn’t have been possible. 

In the end, he spends two hours silently sitting on the couch in the ima, eyes closed, and gets nowhere. 

When he sets out the futon that night, after a meal, he lays down and spends another hour doing the same thing before he lets himself fall asleep. 

And although it isn’t much, he likes to think he could eventually reach something. 

He wakes up early. Bathroom, clothes, food, and then he’s settling in. 

A knock on the door. 

He opens it hesitantly. 

An ANBU stands there. A hand is thrust in front of his face. There’s a small pouch in it. 

He stares at it for a long moment before he reaches out and takes it. 

The ANBU disappears. He closes the door.

When he counts it out, he finds that Hiruzen’s allowance totaled to about 2,600 ryo. He thinks back to the price tags he had been able to see in the stores and the vendors, and he cringes.

Twenty-six hundred wasn’t enough to live off of. 

Oh well. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t the one paying the rent or the heating or the plumbing, Hiruzen was. He just had to buy the food and the clothes and anything else he needed. Well, he says buy, but he doubts most villagers would actually  _ sell _ him anything. 

Whatever. It didn’t matter. 

He just needed more fabric. He could sew his own clothes just fine. Maybe someone would let him buy the cheapest stuff if he was polite or something, or let them kick his ass for a bit. Food, on the other hand, would be a problem. As soon as he ran out, he would have to buy his own food, and well… shit. He was sort of fucked in that department. 

Well. Doesn’t really matter, in the end. By now, he was used to stealing, no matter how much it made him sick to him stomach to do. 

His main points of interest were… something else. 

Speak to the demon. Make some better clothes. Don’t die. 

Oh, and learn to use chakra. 

Really, that was all he could think of. Four things, one of which was a very long process that would fail in the end, but the others? He could work on those pretty easily. Spend a few hours every day trying to talk in his head. Get some fabric, sew some shit, wear it. 

The more vague one was the chakra. 

If he was remembering correctly, there were a few parts to chakra, the most clear being that there were two parts. The physical energy and the spiritual energy. There was something to do with mixing it and spreading it through the body, and well, chakra, bam. 

He also remembered there were other things too. Like meditation. And hand signs. And words. 

He didn’t need any jutsu, not yet anyways. Just… he needed to be able to mold the chakra. Feel it, even. 

And to do that, he needed to meditate. Which he was already doing, sort of. But he thinks he should probably have his mind on something  _ other  _ than the demon when trying to find, feel, and use his chakra in particular. It wouldn’t do to accidentally use the demon’s chakra and cause a mass panic. So he would have to spend even  _ more _ time meditating, over a different thing, which meant he really did have to plan his days out. 

Plus, school. School would be a problem. Also, it would help a lot. He might end up remembering things more clearly if he went through the actual book history, or something. Clarity was not a given with his memories. 

And although he knew it was a fact that Hiruzen would want him in the Academy, that wasn’t to say he wouldn’t end up in civilian school beforehand. Although he somewhat doubts it, it’s still a possibility. 

Then, there’s the whole… Hiruzen problem. 

The guy… probably knew he was on the streets for a while. If his now memories were correct, the reason he had recognized Hiruzen was because the man had visited him in the orphanage before. Only once a year, but still. So the man had known him  _ personally, _ and yet, supposedly, he hadn’t noticed the kid had been missing from the orphanage for, what the entire year? Half a year? At least a few months. He thinks, maybe, Hiruzen had noticed because he had come to visit and not found the kid there. 

But it was probably more likely the matron had told him beforehand. Or maybe he had heard about it and waited. Which wasn’t likely, but if it  _ was  _ the case, then… asshole. 

But either way? Hiruzen had put a kid in the orphanage and only checked up on him once a year, and hadn’t noticed or done  _ anything _ about the kid being on the streets. 

And the festival. 

The festival hadn’t been quiet. It had been  _ loud, _ and there had been probably hundreds of villagers attending. There was  _ no way _ Hiruzen hadn’t known that it had happened. 

Which put him in a… very upsetting spot. 

Does he trust the old man? Does he even  _ want _ to trust him? 

Mostly, no. 

But he  _ was _ the hokage, and he  _ was _ incredibly powerful. He paid the bills now. He gave him the money to live. He handed over an apartment with no extra charge. 

He doesn’t really know what to do about any of that. 

So for now, just meditation. Trying to feel the… energy in his body. 

But that’s for later. 

He needs to get some fabrics. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TWs/CWs: untranslated speech (Japanese; mostly names of things), orphanage mentions, referenced violence, referenced discrimination, theft mention, Sarutobi Hiruzen mentions, mold mention, bug mention, implied neglect, demon mentions, scars, cursing, pain mention, mention of not having enough money to live off of, death mention, someone powerful having nearly complete monetary control over a child, and me trying to use Japanese terms to make this a bit more grounded and probably failing horribly. Let me know it I miss any!
> 
> Chapter summary, for those uncomfortable with these: The main character, now knowing he is Naruto, gets an apartment, and allowance, and realized that he needs to figure out what he’s going to do. His current plan is to figure out how to use his chakra, talk to the Kyuubi, and make some clothes. He also plans on what he’s going to do when he gets to the Academy.
> 
> Thanks for reading,
> 
> Peace out.


End file.
